The Politics of New Castes

With the Prime Minister announcing the poor, women, farmers, and the youths as new caste categories, it would be interesting to see its impact on the upcoming General Elections

- Abhik Bhattacharya

ON August 7, 1990, Prime Minister V P Singh, while implementing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission—that included giving 27 per cent reservation to the socially and educationally backward classes—said on the floor of the house: “It is a momentous decision of social justice”. Evoking the legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar, who tirelessly fought for social and political reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and the Scheduled Tribes (ST), Singh added: “The present decisions are along the same lines, and belong to the tradition of this government’s dedication to the cause of SCs, socially and educationally backward classes and other weaker sections.”

Though this declaration did not cause any immediate stir in the North, Singh was aware of the impending tectonic shift in Indian politics. As the Janata Dal’s (JD) two alliance partners—the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left—were not working in a syncretic manner, Singh, analysts say, wanted to strengthen the social alliance of the Ahir-Jat-Gujjar-andRajput (AJGAR) category that catapulted him to power in 1989. And the best way to do this was to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations.

In the following years, the social alliance of the OBCs and the Dalits, especially across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, not only changed the fate of politics in India—with the exit of the Congress from both states—it also gave birth to the Kamandal politics that the BJP leveraged to consolidate all the Hindu castes.